Mayor Frank DelCore checks out one of the book boxes installed in the castle playground at the municipal complex as Girl Scout Amanda Gillette stands behind her cousins
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Parents who take their children to the castle playground on South Branch Road can now do more than play with their youngsters. They can read, too.
That’s thanks to two “book boxes” that have been installed along the fence on the easterly side of the wooden maze of platforms and stairs off a parking lot to the municipal building.
The boxes are the Girl Scout Gold Award project of Amanda Gillette, a 16-year-old who organized and helped build the little lending libraries that contain both kids’ and adults’ books.
The books are free for the taking, but people are encouraged to replace, substitute and supplement with other books.
The two boxes are built in the shape of turrets and towers. They have doors with medieval-themed images of knights on horseback overlooking the castle. The images on the glass have been outlined in lead and stained — all the work of Amanda’s cousin, Olivia Skvarenina, 11, of Jackson.
“Studies show kids learn better in the outdoors environment, they focus more and give more time to it,” said Amanda, the daughter of Patty and Greg Gillette.
“It’s important that kids read with their parents, too,” she said.
Amanda did the physical work to cut and nail cedar shingles on the boxes. She also had to navigate the idea through township officials, and to work with the Department of Public Works to sink postholes in the mulch-covered ground.
The original plan was for the boxes to go in the sensory garden at Ann VanMiddlesworth Park, but that idea was nixed and the castle playground substituted. In retrospect, it makes sense.
“I’m so happy. It looks so great,” said a beaming Amanda on Monday night, when Mayor Frank DelCore came to pose at the ribbon-snipping.
